


you gotta kick (a bad habit)

by ilgaksu



Series: not just good business [6]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Agender Kuroo, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Mob, Introspection, It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets Shopped, M/M, Mob Life, Multi, Other, non-binary kenma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5242262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Together they stare out at the portion of the city they’ve cleaved themselves to.</p><p>“Shouyo can’t keep a secret until it matters,” Kenma says slowly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you gotta kick (a bad habit)

**Author's Note:**

> Set several weeks after the events of the previous fics in the series.

When Kuroo opens the door, the apartment is dark, and Kenma is curled in Kuroo’s place on the windowseat, rose-gold in the light of the solitary table lamp. _The Art of War_ is on their lap. They haven’t opened it yet. They look up sharply when Kuroo clicks the door shut behind him, eyes honey-bright.

“Just me,” he says, and their eyes soften; they turn back to staring out at the city wordlessly.

“Are you ignoring me,” Kuroo doesn’t ask. Kenma shrugs, and the slope of their shoulder is bedrock. It’s everything Kuroo’s hung himself from, hands curled into the stone of it, and nobody’s ever told him what happens if he lets go.

“That depends. Are you going to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

“You know that’s my speciality, kitten.”

Kuroo comes over and bends down to rest his chin on top of Kenma’s head, and Kenma leans back to worry at the silk hem of Kuroo’s camisole, the white of their nails against the dark green. Together they stare out at the portion of the city they’ve cleaved themselves to.

“Shouyo can’t keep a secret until it matters,” Kenma says slowly.

“For fuck’s sake,” Kuroo says. He wishes he sounded angry. He mostly just sounds tired. “Save him from himself, Kenma. He’s a kid. Tell them someone’s intercepting the messages. You don’t have to say who. Let me say. The suspicion’s enough.”

“It’ll start a witch hunt,” Kenma says, jaw stubborn, and Kuroo loves them, but some days he wishes loving Kozume Kenma felt less like running straight at a brick wall and hoping to come out skull intact.   

Silence.

“Eighteen isn’t a child, Kuroo.”

Kenma doesn’t say: at nineteen, you were older. At nineteen, they called you up. At seventeen, I was younger. At seventeen, I had to watch you go. There’s no point to Kenma in repeating what they both already know. It’s a waste of breath, and Kenma is nothing if not efficient. Kuroo kisses the top of their head.

“The kid thinks he’s immortal, Kenma.”

Kuroo doesn’t say: we never made that mistake, not once.

Kenma sighs, and the sigh is agreement.

“If they find out we knew,” Kuroo tries again, “We have our own to think of.”

“Shouyo is our own.”

“No, he’s not,” Kuroo says, as gently as possible. “He’s yours, and he’s Karasuno’s, and it’s not the same thing.”

Kuroo wonders mildly if he was ever supposed to be jealous of Hinata sometimes; half-drowsing in the back of the picture house with monochrome romantics flickering on the screen, Kenma’s hand curled around his wrist like ownership. He isn’t sure. It’s hard to be jealous about Kenma nowadays. It would be like being jealous of your own rib. He’s never given Kenma a ring, but if something ever happened to them, Kuroo thinks the word _widowed_ would work just fine. Language is a tricky thing, hovering somewhere below the skin, after all. Kenma’s grip on the camisole is wrinkling the silk, awry with their wariness; Kuroo imagines their mind like the engines in the factories he lost years in, constantly churning at metalgun pace, and Kuroo lets it be.

 _Pick your battles,_ they’d told him in the orphanage at ten, an angry raging biracial bastard abandoned on the doorsteps of the Jewish orphanage, crying in the witchlight dawn. _Pick your battles. Pick your -_

There are some fights an alley kid can't win, no matter how much they dress themselves up for the dinner party.  

Kenma scrunches their nose up, frowning, the anxiety curling up in their bones. Kuroo can feel it.

“It’s your decision, kitten. You know I’m good at keeping my mouth shut.”  

Kenma hums, considering, and then quiets. Kuroo swallows down what he can of his own anxiety, the rattling, persistent Gorgon of it; and leans against Kenma, and Kuroo lets it be.


End file.
